Coffin
by ATGS
Summary: Zack's death forces Cody to try to cope in a world that has turned upside down as he is forced to grow up and live the rest of his life without him.


**Coffin**

**A Suite Life of Zack and Cody Fanfic**

**All Characters owned by Walt Disney.**

**Sometimes things go really wrong in life. Things that we wish we could change. But we can't. Sometimes there's nothing we can do but cope. Sometimes the story doesn't have a happy ending. Sometimes one chapter of the story ends, and with the greatest of pain, another chapter must take its place.**

It was the hardest thing he would ever do in his life.

Cody had looked into the coffin yesterday. He hadn't thought he'd be able to do it. But it had been surprisingly easier than he thought. And horrifying.

He wasn't sure if he would be able to do it again today. But he knew he had to. This was the last day he would be able to see Zack.

That thought sent a wave of sharp pain through Cody's stomach. It was not the first time he had felt it. It wouldn't be the last.

The first, of course, was when the news came.

Cody remembered that day so clearly. They had gotten up that beautiful Saturday morning in May. Nothing was out of the ordinary. They were a family then. Whole. Complete.

Zack and Cody had gone about their usual morning banter with each other. Zack left after breakfast to go hang out with some friends. Cody was going to stay home and catch up on his reading. Carey was off work, and she was staying at home to try and get some painting done like she'd been planning on getting around to for a while.

Zack walked out the door and Cody never saw him alive again.

Two hours later, there was a knock at their suite door. It was a policeman.

Cody had the strangest horrifying feeling when his mom opened the door and he saw the policeman.

He should have figured that it was just Zack pulling some prank and having gotten into major trouble for it. Again.

But strangely, that wasn't the way he had felt inside that day. Instantly, somehow, he just knew that it wasn't a prank.

The policeman had ushered Carey out to the hall to speak to her privately.

When she had come back in, she had turned into an instant wreck. Tears were streaming down her face.

Cody knew, but didn't want to believe. He asked what was wrong, hoping it was anything else. ANYTHING else.

When his mom had trouble choking out the answer he had started screaming.

When she uttered those words, those horrible, sickening words, he hadn't been able to take it.

He was at a complete loss.

Have you ever felt the most horrifying rush of emotions you've ever felt in your life all happening at once? Like you just want to scream, to explode, to run away, to die, to turn back the clock, to lay down and not get up, to run up to the rooftop and make a running jump off of it, to beg, to plead, to wake up from this nightmare, all these things at once, and not being able to control the torrent of feelings?

Cody had been in total shock. He had wanted to run away, but he didn't want to leave his mom alone.

He and Zack had been talking just a short while ago. How had this happened?

_HOW WAS HE SUPPOSED TO UNDERSTAND AND ACCEPT THAT HE WAS NEVER GOING TO SEE HIS BROTHER AGAIN?_

He tried to convince himself there'd been some mistake. Maybe it was some other kid that had gotten hit by a bus running off the road. Maybe Zack really was okay. Maybe Zack would come walking in eventually as if nothing had been wrong. But he never would. He couldn't. They hadn't been wrong. He'd had his student ID on him at the time.

Zack Martin was never coming home again.

Cody couldn't fathom that he would never see his brother again. Couldn't believe it. It just couldn't be true. But it was.

The suite that day had been filled with family members and friends. Even Moseby.

Everyone tried to talk to Cody. Everyone tried to offer their condolences. But he didn't want to talk to any of them. Having other people there helped, but very little. Their words didn't help take his pain away. Their promises that if he "ever needed ANYTHING" didn't do a damn thing to make him feel better.

Cody felt the somber gathering in his suite minus Zack was the single most horrifying event he had ever experienced in his life.

He slipped out, letting his dad know where he would be, and went for a walk.

He walked around the city. The city was busy and bustling. He thought to himself, how many times had he walked all around this city with Zack?

He took his walk through the parts that weren't very crowded. This gave him the ability to squeeze out a number of tears without drawing too much attention to himself.

All he could think about was:

_not my brother not my brother not my brother not my brother_

_why God why? why would you allow this to happen? i can't take it witHOUT MY BROTHER!_

_If you would give him back, God, I promise I'll never take anything for granted ever again! Just let me wake up! Just give me one more chance!_

But his words fell on silent ears. There would be no more chances.

He passed by the area where the accident had happened. He and Zack had been by here many times before. There was nothing out of the ordinary. You wouldn't even know now that anything amiss had ever happened here. But then Cody took a closer look at the pavement of the sidewalk near the road.

He could see red. Stained blood. Cody threw up.

He didn't feel any better when he got home. He wouldn't feel better that night.

Oh, the first night was the hardest! His brother's bed was right next to his in their room. Unoccupied. It would never be occupied again.

He could hear his mother pacing the living room all night, weeping.

He eventually managed to drift off to sleep, maybe somewhere around five or six in the morning.

He had several sadistic dreams. Dreams where Zack kept getting killed, but then it would turn out to have all been a dream all along and Zack was okay! But eventually Cody woke up for real. And he knew.

_Zack's dead._

Those were the first two words he would think of every morning for nearly a year when he would first wake up in the morning. It was horrifying.

He remembered, upon waking that first morning, how he was in complete disbelief. For a few minutes, he tried to convince himself it WAS a nightmare. But Zack's bed was empty.

And all Cody needed to do was enter the living room where Carey sat sipping a mug of coffee, eyes bloodshot from having little to no sleep, her painting easel still sitting with its unfinished painting barely started, for him to realize for sure it was all true, and he started crying again.

Days two and three were not as hard as day one. But that's like saying getting crucified by nails two and three didn't hurt as much as the first.

The second day, Cody, in his shock, had left home after breakfast to go to the library. He wanted to shut himself in and take his mind off Zack by throwing himself into reading and learning.

But it didn't take. It was too hard to push it out of his mind, and he found himself leaving the library far earlier than he had intended. He had a bit of a breakdown on the way home. He couldn't control his sobs, and he had ran all the way home, with people glancing in the direction of the running, sobbing boy in looks that were a mixture of confusion and worry.

He had gone back to begging that night, praying that God would have mercy on him. Just one little exception! Give Zack back! He had learned his lesson! He would never take for granted what he had ever again!

But it was not to be so.

The next few days, he was forced to witness a rather horrifying ordeal, his mom and dad having to do preparations for the funeral.

It was the most sadistic thing he'd ever seen, Cody thought. They made the loved ones of the recently deceased work their butts off doing all the funeral arrangements themselves.

Well, he guessed he understood the logic of that. It was something that really needed to be properly done and customized by the family. It was the very last thing they would ever be able to give Zack.

But it was still, to Cody, taking the very worst tragedy of their lives and then having it literally SHOVED in their faces for several days straight.

The funeral had come far too fast. It had struck Cody today that less than a week ago everything had been just fine and he had still had his brother. Another strong feeling of pain.

The viewing. Cody hadn't thought he'd be able to go through with it. Seeing made it final.

But he did see. The morticians had done a good job with his body. He had looked so peaceful lying there. But Cody didn't want him to be lying there. Cody wanted him to get up and have their family be whole again.

But his brother wouldn't move.

He was very surprised he didn't cry the entire time during the viewing. But that would come later that night. And the next morning, which was today.

Oh, yes. The crying was most definitely not over by a longshot.

The service was droning on and on.

It was, in the end, a very good service, but Cody felt it was like an exercise in torture. But yet he didn't want it to be over, because it being over meant Zack's coffin would be taken outside and finally lowered into the ground. Forever.

He thought about Zack's body, lying in that casket deep under the Earth, slowly rotting away over the years, turning green, crumbling to dust, while he continued to grow up and move on with his life. Alone.

It was too much to bear.

Everyone got to go around and view Zack one final time. Carey, Kurt, and Cody were the very last ones to get to do so. They were the ones who got to close the casket.

Kurt closed it as Carey and Cody stood and watched. As it came down and blocked Zack from view permanently, it was the hardest thing Cody had ever been through in his entire life.

They went outside, had yet another torturous small service, before lowering the casket into the ground, everyone singing Amazing Grace...

Cody hated that song now. He never wanted to hear it again.

Zack's coffin went into the ground, and then everyone had to leave as the gravediggers came to begin shuffling the dirt into the hole.

Next everyone went back to the Tipton to have a reception.

Moseby had reserved the ballroom for this purpose. There was a table with a large buffet of food that Cody didn't want to eat but ate anyways simply because he was starving. It tasted good but he didn't want to enjoy it, because he felt like he shouldn't be able to enjoy anything in the world ever again now that his brother was gone, but he felt guilty about enjoying it anyways.

The whole reception just felt wrong. It felt wrong because Zack wasn't there. Cody couldn't remember the last time he'd been at an event like this in the hotel where Zack wasn't there with him to try and get them into some kind of major trouble. But they were here now because Zack wasn't with them any longer. Cody didn't want to be here because there was no Zack and all those damned pictures they had posted everywhere of Zack reminded him of Zack and the fact that he would no longer be here.

But he also didn't want to leave and go back to that empty suite because doing so would also remind him that his brother was gone. Neither did he want to go for another walk because that, too, would also be a harsh reminder.

There was just no way to win.

The suite felt so empty without Zack. So lifeless. It was like a light that had once been there had been snuffed out and there was no way to rekindle it.

People sent so many damn flowers. Cody didn't understand why people needed to send so many damn flowers. Just what were they supposed to do with them all, anyways?

As if it couldn't have been rubbed in anymore enough, now the whole fricking suite had to smell like the funeral parlor.

Days passed.

Cody returned to school. It felt weird going by himself. It felt weird coming home by himself. It felt weird that Zack wasn't at home. It felt weird that Zack wasn't available to do anything with him ever again.

Cody now had the private bedroom he always dreamed of. Except now he didn't want it at all.

The depression wouldn't go away for a long time. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months.

Moseby got his wish. Zack and Cody would never terrorize his hotel again. Zack was dead and Cody didn't have the will. But Cody got the sense that, like with his private bedroom, Moseby wished he had not gotten his wish either.

Life turned into a blur. A very lonely blur. True, Cody still had friends, so he wasn't truly lonely, but Zack had left an empty void that would never be filled.

Everything reminded Cody of Zack.

The missing bed and the more spacious immaculately clean bedroom. Going to school alone. Coming home alone. Hanging out with his and Zack's friends, without Zack. Him and mom going out and doing things together without Zack. The eerie silence of the suite. Waking up each morning and those horrid words immediately being on his mind

_Zack's dead._

One thing that Cody realized he missed most of all was that he no longer had someone to talk to or be there for him whenever he needed. Oh, sure, there was mom and a whole host of other people who promised that "if they ever needed anything," but it wasn't the same. Only after Zack's death did Cody realize just how close he had really been to his brother.

Christmas came. It was the worst Christmas of his life. He had been doing well in the last few months leading up to it. He hadn't cried that much. But Christmas really did it to him again. The presents were just for him. Only for him. For him and for no one else. And he hadn't gotten Zack anything even though he had wanted to but couldn't because Zack was dead and he would always be dead and there would never be another Christmas with Zack and nothing would ever be the same again.

The thought of suicide never crossed Cody's mind. He was not that type of person. Yet, the thought of having to go through the rest of his life without Zack was unbearable.

He and his mother had been going through counseling, and it helped somewhat, but it didn't alleviate the pain. Not even a little.

The new year came around.

From there, the anniversary of Zack's death, May 21st, eventually rolled around.

It was another strongly emotional day, but it didn't hurt as bad as the day had exactly a year ago. Cody realized for the first time that day that he hadn't been waking up lately with those horrifying words on the tip of his mind.

He still had dreams about Zack. It was those day, after the dreams, that he got the most emotional. His favorite dream had been the one where God had sent Zack back because Zack was driving him and everyone up in heaven crazy. "God" suspiciously looked an awful lot like Mr. Moseby.

The next year was not as hard as the first. Cody began to adjust. It was a horrifying adjusting. But slowly, it began to happen. Life had changed completely. Cody would never again be the same person.

That year he found the will in himself to go to the cemetery on a regular basis. He would sit in front of Zack's gravestone and talk to him.

Those talks became a ritual, happening at least two or three times a week. Cody was still sad, but it made him feel slightly better. He would talk, he would cry, but at least he could be there. If only in the slightest way, he could be there with his brother.

Year three came around. Cody stopped going to the cemetery. He felt kind of guilty about that. But his life was getting busy. He was starting to focus. He had his whole future ahead of him. He was excited about it. Not to say Zack's absence still didn't leave an empty hole in his heart. He would never truly recover.

His brother had started fading away a bit in his mind. It wasn't that Cody was forgetting Zack. Not at all. It's just that Zack was becoming less of a real person and more of an image in his head. With each passing day, he wasn't entirely sure if the Zack he was remembering had been the Zack of reality, or if he was just remembering him the way he wanted to based off his own trauma.

Cody graduated high school and got accepted into Yale. It was the most exciting day of his life, but all he could think about was what Zack might have been like if he had been there.

It was his most exciting day, and Zack's death had been so long ago, but still he would have given anything for Zack to have been there to share it with him.

Cody went to college. Grew up. Got married. Had kids. Lived a good life. But he never forgot Zack, never forgot the brother whose life had been cut off far too early, the boy who he had spent all those good times with.

So short, so short.

**Cherish those you have in your life while you have them. They may not always be around forever.**


End file.
